HIV/AIDS Campaigns Turning Communal. BJP Leader

[Guest guest]

HIV/AIDS Campaigns Turning Communal, Say Hindu Leaders

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, May 19 (IPS) - It is still debatable whether India is

sitting on a ticking HIV/AIDS time bomb. But pro-Hindu groups seem

to have brought the issue to the forefront by serving notice to

international funding agencies that campaigns showing the sub-

continent's religious and cultural values in a poor light will no

longer be tolerated.

''We are tired of foreigners constantly bombarding us with inflated

statistics telling us that we are faced with an HIV/AIDS epidemic

when there are many other more serious and pressing issues to deal

with in this country,'' B.P. Singhal, former high-ranking police

official and parliamentarian told IPS in an interview.

Singhal, a prominent member of the pro-Hindu, Bharatiya Janata Party

(BJP) that ruled India for six years till it lost the elections last

May was particularly incensed by new estimates that India may have

overtaken South Africa as the country with the highest number of HIV

affected people.

That estimation came from Feachem, executive director of the

Geneva-based, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,

at a press conference in Paris on Apr. 20.

''The official statistics show India in second place and South

Africa in first place,'' Feachem said. ''The official statistics are

wrong. India is in first place.'' He also said that the AIDS

epidemic in India is ''out of control''.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says that as

of the end of 2003, South Africa had an estimated 5.3 million HIV-

positive residents, and India had 5.1 million. But Feachem says

India's actual caseload is probably much higher because of poor

disease- reporting practices in the country and could be as high as

8.5 million people.

''The epidemic is growing very rapidly. It is out of control,''

Feachem was quoted as saying and also adding that nothing serious

enough was being done in India to prevent the spread of the HIV

virus that is believed to cause AIDS.

The Global Fund set up two years ago has commitments worth over

three billion U.S. dollars to combat HIV/AIDs, Tuberculosis and

Malaria in 127 countries with 413 million dollars of that money

going to India alone.

The Indian government dismissed Feachem's claims that India now has

the highest number of HIV/AIDS cases of any country worldwide.

S.Y. Quraishi, director of India's National AIDS Control

Organisation, said the claims are `'nonsense'', adding, `'We stand

by our figure of 5.1 million.

''Whether it is more than five million or three million or two

million, we still have a problem,'' Quraishi said, adding, `'We

should not be complacent.''

But Singhal, who is also a spokesman for the BJP and chief of the

affiliated Sanskritic Sewa Sangh (Organisation for the Protection of

Culture), was more blunt.

''How do people sitting in Paris know what is happening or not

happening in this country and what do they care anyway?'' he

demanded to know.

But official figures on how many people are actually afflicted by

the virus are largely a matter of conjecture, which India's Health

Minister Ambumoni Ramadoss has admitted to.

With a history of conflict between bilateral and multi-lateral

funding agencies and his own ministry over who has the right figures

and also who has the right to release those figures, Ramadoss has

brought in private consultants including the globally-known

assessors McKinsey and Company to arrive at figures that can pass

scrutiny.

But more than unsupported statistics, what has truly incensed

Singhal and other pro-Hindu leaders is Feachem's statement in Paris

that he expected the epidemic to grow faster among India's majority

Hindu population than among Muslims because of the custom of male

circumcision in the latter community.

''This is obnoxious. Has there been any study done on the spread of

HIV/AIDS within the different religious communities in India? Anyway

we are not going to tolerate such remarks made against Hindus,''

said a furious Singhal.

Another prominent pro-Hindu organisation, the Jan Abhiyan (Public

Campaign) has, following a meeting held over Feachem's remarks,

resolved to hold demonstrations outside the offices of UNAIDS. The

organisation said it would only call off the demonstrations if

Feachem came to India and apologised publicly and unconditionally to

all Hindus.

Dushyant Chopra who leads the Jan Abhiyan said he has written a

protest note to Feachem warning him that if he does not come to

India, his group was prepared to confront him if he makes an

appearance in other global capitals.

''We are waiting for him (Feachem) to make a written response to our

demand before we decide on a course of action but one way or another

we are not going to remain silent any longer - we have had enough of

this,'' Chopra said.

So far, Feachem has responded to letters from the Joint Action

Council (JAC), an organisation that fights for the rights of

HIV/AIDS sufferers as well as those who have been socially harmed by

over enthusiastic or insensitive campaigns against the disease in

India's conservative society.

In a letter to the JAC dated May 10, Feachem reiterated that ''in

all likelihood, the epidemic will grow faster in India's Hindu

population than in India's Muslim one...It rests on the influence of

male circumcision on HIV spread at the population level.''

Subsequently, on May 12, as the controversy snowballed, Feachem

wrote defensively to Purushottaman Mulloli, director of JAC saying

that he was ''married to a Hindu'' and had ''the highest regard and

respect for the Hindu faith.''

This is not the first time that international agencies have been

accused of insensitivity and trodding on local feelings in the

campaigns they fund against HIV/AIDs in this country.

In 2001, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was compelled

to withdraw an 80-page publication it funded called ''Caste-based

Prostitution in India'' after it was pointed out by voluntary

agencies that the booklet seemed to target a specific caste group in

India as being given to pimping and prostitution and were

therefore 'high-risk'.

Another publication designed to address ''high-risk behaviour''

suggested that incest was rampant in the Himalayan district of

Almora resulting police having to arrest the authors, Abhijeet and

his wife Yashodara Das and keeping them in protective custody for

weeks to prevent their lynching by incensed locals.

Said Mulloli: ''The whole strategy of identifying particular groups

or professions as high-risk and then subjecting them to targeted

campaigns is risky and guaranteed to bring on a backlash when

noticed.

But the backlash now could be big.

''This time the Global Fund has gone and targeted 900 million

Hindus,'' added Mulloli. (END/2005)

http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=28737

[Guest guest]

Dear members,

Dont you think the debate is now going out of hands?

As all are groping in the dark or are the blind persons in the proverbial story

of an elephant and 7 blind men, it really does not matter whether we are number

one or number two.

Secondly if some one states that 'if according to research circumcision

protects' then people who are circumsized will be relatively better protected,

how can this become a communal comment?

Please do not stoop so low.

No one needs to tell who is married to whom and how that proves ones respect for

others.

It is these types of cultural issues that are delaying the responses to the

epidemic.

Dr. Vinay Kulkarni

PRAYAS HEALTH

E-mail:<prayashealth@...>